Highlander: The Phoenix
by Walks with Scissors
Summary: A young girl, killed in an accident and then reborn to immortality is found by an immortal scholar who had long since left the game. When an old nemesis appears carrying an ancient artifact, he must choose whether to fight again or lose his new student.
1. Chapter 1 Part 1: Broken

No healthy or mentally stable person ever starts their day thinking they are going to die. And certainly not someone in the flower of their youth, for the very nature of the young is to believe that they are indestructible; that they are immortal.

Any life insurance salesman can, with only a few questions, tell you with a macabre certainty when you are going to die. But it is, after all, only a guess based on statistical mathematics. Sometimes you beat the odds, and not in a good way. Sometimes all it takes is a freak accident and all of those mathematical equations go out the window.

Eleven-year-old Jennifer Woods was about to find out the truth of this. The cliché would be to say that she was about to find out that she was, in fact, not immortal. But that was not entirely the case as she would soon learn.

Jennifer knew the story of the Phoenix quite well. It is the story of the mythical Egyptian bird that upon reaching the end of its life dies in flames. But from the ashes of the Phoenix, it is reborn and takes to the skies to live once again.

The rain tapped upon window of Jennifer's second floor bedroom. The sound was nearly rhythmic, like the tapping at the door by Edgar Allen Poe's portentous raven. The skies were dark and forbidding, not the day that the sleeping girl had expected for the start of a school year; for her first day in the sixth grade.

The gloom cast gray shadows around the bedroom, even with the blinds to all the windows pulled open. It was the type of morning that looked more like twilight than it looked like the dawn. It was the type of morning that begged more for a fireplace and a mug of hot cocoa than it did a trip outside into the cold and the weather.

Jennifer lay in the dim morning light, her comforter pulled up almost over her head with only her disarrayed and tangled red hair spilling out from over a freckled forehead. The blanket itself was pink and covered in cartoon characters; a jarring contrast from the posters of boys on her walls. Orlando Bloom looked down on her from his place above her bed, him and half a dozen others; their images placed around the room with a reverence usually reserved for the gods and their saints. And perhaps in a way they were. Bedecking her walls were the icons of the deities, the patrons of schoolgirl crushes and first loves.

Stuffed animals and boys and little girl lace all combined together to tell the story of a girl on the cusp of womanhood. A girl that was ending one chapter of her life and preparing to step into the next. Mostly, it spoke of the awkward time between childhood and adulthood. It's the time when you felt both overjoyed and reluctant to set aside the trappings of childhood and take on the mantle of a young adult. It is a short but turbulent time, but often the same could be said of life itself.

The shape under the blanket was contemplating no such deep thoughts that dreary September morning. The form beneath it rose and fell lazily; occasionally a soft snore reverberated from beneath it. One freckled arm hung out from the edge of the bed, swinging minutely like the pendulum of a clock that had long since wound down; the lavender nails on its hand almost touching the floor.

Beside the bed was an alarm clock, the time on it read 6:59 in bright red, declamatory numerals. In only a few more moments it would rouse Jennifer from her sleep to start the most important day of her life. Before the day is over, the story of the Phoenix will take on a completely new meaning to the young girl.

Here, enjoying her last few moments of sleep was Jennifer Woods, on the day she died.


	2. Chapter 2

Anyone who has ever ridden on a rollercoaster knows that feeling the moment that the car goes over the first summit and begins to turn downward. Gravity takes hold of you, and you find yourself being hurled faster and faster to the ground below only to be caught at the last moment and flung somewhere completely different.

For Jennifer Woods, the rollercoaster began climbing toward that summit at the moment the red numerals on her alarm clock read 7:00. The digital display glared accusingly at her for only a fraction of a second before the mechanism bellowed out a terrifying bray that sounded like a cross between a foghorn and an enraged rhinoceros preparing to batter its way through the wall.

Jennifer's eyes snapped open and her arm swung around in a wild and panicked arc, making a futile attempt to find the snooze button, or the off button, or maybe just to beat the alarm clock into submission. She flailed about comically, knocking a water glass off of the table onto the floor and rapping her knuckles painfully against the table lamp before finally striking a button to make the hideous noise stop.

Three months of summer vacation had left her in an early morning stupor. She stared at the ceiling for a moment while rubbing her wounded knuckles with her other hand when she suddenly remembered what day this was. She felt the twin pangs of both eagerness and anxiety about returning to school.

School was, after all, the proving grounds of childhood. It was really nothing more than a game, if you chose to look at it that way. It had its winners and its losers, it had a complicated rule system (some written, some not) and penalties for breaking those rules.

Jennifer rose from bed, stripping her green nightshirt off during her walk toward the shower. She had never thought of such things, at least not consciously. If she had, she would have felt somewhat uneasy about the idea that her life could be reduced down to something as trivial as a game. She wouldn't have been able to point out _why _it made her uneasy, just that it did.

As she started the shower, she turned her head and caught sight of the temporary tattoo on her bare shoulder. She had gotten it while with her friends at a carnival a week before, their last big day of fun before school recommenced. The size of a credit card and starting to peel and fade, it was a tattoo of a bird wreathed in an aura of flames. It appeared to be soaring with its wings splayed out behind it leaving a trailing a wake or red and orange fire.

She gently brushed her hair off of her shoulder to get a better look at it. Smiling, she kept on staring at it, admiring it, until the steam from the shower began to slowly cloud over the mirror behind her. She liked the look of it; somehow she thought it fit her. Ideas in childhood rarely last into maturity, but at this moment she thought she might want to get it permanent when she was older.

A newly showered and dressed Jennifer went downstairs, wearing the soft yellow dress she had picked out for the first day of school (after an hour or so of anguishing and indecision.) The heels of her shoes made hollow taps against the wood floors as she quickly walked past her mother who was enjoying both her coffee and newspaper at the dining room table. Out of sight but not entirely out of mind, the television was blaring the news and weather in the living room.

"Hi mom." Jennifer said, pulling a bowl and a box of Fruit Loops out of the kitchen cabinets.

Andrea Woods looked up from her paper and smiled at her daughter over the half-wall that separated the dining room and kitchen. "You look nice this morning, honey."

Jennifer flashed her mom a sunny smile as she sat down, pouring herself a bowl of cereal.

"Thanks."

"Remember, I'm going to be working late tonight. Your grandmother is going to pick you up from school at a quarter till three. You are going to eat dinner over there and I should be by to pick you up no later than six or seven." Jennifer's mom lectured.

Jennifer nodded. This was the same old story. She wished that her mom would be home more, maybe spend more time with her; but such was the plight of the single parent. It took all of Andrea Woods' resources just for them to barely get by sometimes. One day things were going to be different, her mom said so and she believed her. One day all of the hard work was going to pay off and everything would be okay again, they could both be as happy as they were when her father was still alive.

But for now it was another day of barely seeing her mom. It was a day of getting into her grandmother's rusty old Oldsmobile and going home to eat whatever god-awful concoction she thought up for dinner this time. She would sit at the dining room table, the old dining room table, to do her homework. Jennifer always felt ill-at-ease sitting there, she had memories of being very little and uneasy about the legs of the table that were carved into great gnarled claws. It gave the illusion that the tablecloth was concealing some kind of gargantuan monster that was about to leap out from under it and devour her whole.

She had grown up to the wise old age of eleven and now recognized how preposterous her fears really were. There were no monsters in this world, at least not the conventional type that lurk under children's beds or within the dark confines of their closets…or under the tablecloth of their grandmother's dining room table. That wasn't enough to keep the table from being so insufferably creepy though. She swore to herself as she wolfed down her bowl of cereal that if she ever inherited that table she would have it chopped up and use it for firewood. Game over, problem solved.

The daydream of her jumping up and down in front of the fireplace and watching that damnable table burn made her smile. She stifled it quickly; not wanting her mom to notice and ask her what was so funny. _You know nanna's table with the scary claws? I was just thinking that it would look far better in the fireplace than it would in the dining room._

Jennifer turned her attention to the news for a moment. The weather had been really strange these last few days. It was unseasonably cold – she couldn't recall it being this cold in September before. The news was warning that the roads could be icy, especially on the mountain roads.

It would have been funny, she reflected, if the first day of school got called off for bad weather. It was too much of a pipe dream to hope for though. And besides, she was kind of excited to go back anyway. This was her first day in middle school, and although she had gotten to see it a little bit during the orientation a few weeks earlier, it didn't make the idea of a new place any less daunting.

Her mom was quieter than usual this morning, and when Jennifer cleared her bowl off the table she found out why. An empty wine bottle sat on the kitchen counter beside an empty glass. Her mother had been doing that more and more lately, she would drink an entire bottle of wine by herself at night (usually after Jennifer was in bed.) It was very uncommon at first, but it had been happening more and more often – Especially in the last few weeks.

Jennifer knew nothing about hangovers, and she probably wouldn't have understood them if she did. Jennifer knew nothing about creditors and late payments and foreclosure notices, and Andrea Woods was grateful for that. Jennifer didn't know that her and her mother were weeks away from being kicked out of their house for missed house payments. She didn't know that her mother breathed a sigh of relief every time she walked out the door in the morning to see that the car was still there, and not spirited off during the night in the hands of a repoman.

Jennifer _sensed_ something amiss, to be sure. She sensed that her mom's drinking was a symptom of the problem and not the problem itself. Most of all she sensed that something was fundamentally wrong with her mom's mood these last few months and whatever the problem was, it was building. It didn't matter though; she knew that if it was bad enough, her mom would tell her about it. And more than anything, she knew that in the end her mom would take care of her and everything would be okay.

Today wouldn't be the day they talked about it, it seemed. At least it wasn't going to be this morning.

"Com'on sweetie." Jennifer's mother said, picking her coat up off the back of the chair. "It's time to go. You don't want to be late on your first day in middle school do you?"

Jennifer certainly did not. She put her coat on over her dress and threw her denim backpack over one shoulder, following her mom outside. And once again her mother breathed that common sigh of relief because the car was there this morning.

Unfortunately.


	3. Chapter 3

The rollercoaster was tottering right at its peak as Jennifer and her mother got into the car that morning. Slowly over the summit it tipped and began picking up speed, inches at a time to start but then faster and faster as it dove straight for the bottom. Five minutes from now Jennifer and Andrea Woods would be dead, but at this moment they were chatting with each other over the inconsequential.

They talked about what television show actresses were in and which ones were out. They spoke of various and sundry, the marvelous irrelevance of a young girl's cares and worries. _The time has come, _much like the walrus had said in Lewis Carroll's book, _to talk of many things: of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings. _They spoke of many trivial things then, during the last totally carefree moments that Jennifer would have in her life.

She was an intelligent girl; she was smart enough to know that roads get more dangerous when they are wet. She was intelligent enough to know that when someone isn't feeling well, or hung over in this case, they aren't going to be able to drive as well as they normally could.

As she was sitting in the car watching the scenery go by and listening to her mother tell her about the dances she went to while she was in middle school, Jennifer wasn't aware that the brakes weren't functioning as well as they were supposed to be. Nor was she aware that her mother knew that the brakes felt soft and sluggish but she was ignoring it because she didn't have the money to fix it. This payday, Andrea told herself; this Friday she would have the money to get that taken care of, that would take care of at least one of their problems.

It was unusually cold that morning. Jennifer was happy that she brought her coat with her the moment she stepped outside into the dreary morning air. It probably wasn't all that bad by itself, but the wind was brisk that morning and she could feel it chilling her to the bone.

The streets of Lake Placid, New York were damp that morning even though the rain had stopped about a half hour before. Coming down the mountain toward the town was treacherous in this situation. Ice tended to form on the road under the shade of the trees, it was very difficult to see until you were driving on top of it and by that time you were already skidding.

Andrea had turned onto the winding road that led down the mountains in the direction of town, where she worked and Jennifer went to school. Neither of them was even marginally aware that the number of seconds left in both of their lives had dropped down into the double digits.

"What class do you have first?" Andrea asked casually, driving with one hand down the first curve in the road.

Jennifer plunged her hand into her bag and pulled out her schedule, she examined it for a moment.

"Homeroom, I guess." She said after studying it for a moment, causing Andrea to laugh.

"No silly, I mean what real class do you have first; after homeroom." She said, smiling at her daughter.

"Oh…" Jennifer said. "Social Studies is first."

"That's good; it's one of your favorites." Her mother noted. "Have you compared with Rachel and Ellen yet to see if you are going to be in any of the same classes with them?"

_Yeah, I am going to be in my math class with Rachel, _Was what Jennifer was about to say when she was thrown forward into her seatbelt. She never saw the deer that was in the middle of the road ahead of them, her hair flew forward into her face and she felt her backpack thump down off of her laps and against her shins painfully.

Her mother said something, but she couldn't make out what it was. All she could hear was the squalling of the locked tires trying desperately to gain traction on the patch of ice the car was flying over as the car hurtled toward the edge of the road and the inadequate safety rail that was positioned a foot or so past the blacktop. She could hear a thin, high-pitched scream and it took her a moment to realize that it was coming from her own throat. She caught only glimpses out the windows as the car shook back and forth violently, Andrea turning the wheel to left and then to the right quickly as she tried desperately to regain some control over the vehicle.

Both of them flew forward again against their seatbelts as the car struck the wood and steel of the railing. The car tore through them as though they were made of tissue paper. Jennifer was sure that she saw splinters of wood fly up in a rooster tail over the hood of the car along with the mangled metal of the barricade as the Toyota compact barreled past it.

The question _"is it over yet?" _ had just popped into Jennifer's head when the car suddenly pitched forward. A horrible weightlessness hit her stomach like a hammer as she was lifted out of seat, the car going into a freefall over the edge of the cliff side. Something struck her in the side of the head; she didn't know what it was at first but then realized that it was her blue denim backpack.

She had been screaming the entire time, and now her mother had joined into the chorus. It didn't seem like her own voice though, it seemed like she was watching what was happening rather than experiencing it herself. It felt like the entire thing was happening in slow motion, her own mind seemed detached and watching in horror.

Her mother still had the brake jammed against the floor, some panicked part of her brain telling her that maybe it could still halt them is she pushed hard enough. A few hundred feet below, the valley floor was rising up to meet them when suddenly the car struck the hillside.

The impact made Jennifer's head strike the passenger side window, starring the glass and leaving a bright streak of blood behind. A large shard of rock jutting away from the cliff tore into the underside of the car, ripping a hole into the passenger compartment through the backseat and rupturing the gas tank.

She heard her mother yelling her name and smelled the acrid odor of gasoline filling the car. She felt the oily spray of it splashing on her. The car was spinning now after the collision with the cliff, sending an aerosol spray of fuel flying through the car; Jennifer could vaguely see it splashing onto the window in front of her.

Her head was throbbing horribly and she had begun to lose consciousness when the car struck a rock outcropping again a hundred or so feet from the valley floor. Sparks flew off of the undercarriage and into the tear in the fuel tank, immediately igniting the vapors that were spreading through the car.

In only a moment the entire car became engulfed in a ball of fire. Jennifer could feel the flames wash over her and for the slightest moment they felt pleasant rather than painful, but then the terrible heat hit. She could not even catch her breath to unleash a scream of agony from the pain, it felt like all of the skin on her body was being peeled off of her and the flesh underneath exposed to sunlight.

All she could see was a bright and burning light. Her head still hurt but it felt no worse than stubbing her toe compared to the horror of being burned alive. In her mind she felt like she had been falling and burning, burning and falling for hours. She had resigned herself to an eternity in the torture she was under when, with one final jarring crash, she was free.

The car hit the valley floor and buckled, the entire body spinning through the air a couple times. Burned and torn, Jennifer's seatbelt broke free and she flew into the windshield. She exploded through the laminated glass, her skull fractured and her neck broken. She was a fireball; her dress, hair, even her flesh itself were fuel for the flames as she stretched her arms wide and her head rolled back. Her last vestiges of consciousness had faded away long before she fell to the ground for the last time.


	4. Chapter 4

It is a question that transcends time and culture. It has been asked from the very beginning of time, longer than the oldest immortal has walked the earth. It will probably never be answered, definitely not in the lifetime of neither you nor I. Every belief system that ever was has attempted to give us insight into its mysteries, but in the end none of us will know until we experience it for ourselves. The question is: _What happens to us when we die?_

Jennifer felt as though she was waking up from a very deep sleep, the kind that takes you an entire morning to rise from. It's a place filled with false starts, the realization that you must return to the world of the living yet you are reluctant to do anything more than to stay right where you are.

There was no light at the end of a long tunnel for Jennifer. There was only a slow and gradual return to reality. It felt much like swimming to the surface from the depths of a very deep pool of water. Her body felt like it was in slow motion, the surface seemed so close she could touch it and yet it took forever for her to get there.

Oblivion surrounded her and she felt comforted by its presence. She knew nothing of herself or who she was. She knew nothing of how she died or the pain and terror she was in during her final moments on Earth. She only knew that she was content where she was now.

Closer and closer she came to her return to consciousness. She was aware that she was about to leave where she was for somewhere else. Finally it hovered right in front of her and it felt very much like simply walking through a doorway. She didn't know where she was going. In fact she knew absolutely nothing about anything until the moment she…

Light, and heat, and cold and darkness, and a million other sensations suddenly flooded Jennifer's body all at once. The terror of her death totally enveloped her consciousness. She shook and convulsed, trying desperately to roll around on the ground, to put out the consuming flames that were surrounding her. Her senses filled her with twin signals, one of extreme heat and the other of extreme cold.

A terrifying banshee howl filled her ears, it was almost deafening in volume and intensity. It was easily the most terrible and frightening sound that she had heard in her entire life. Jennifer was totally unaware that she was the one making it, and that she could not stop screaming. A primal terror had taken control of her body and for the time being she was incapable of getting back control.

She could not comprehend her surroundings. Everything seemed new to her; new and alien. Eyes unfocused and darting around, she was surrounded by browns and greens. Her mind was still split. She was certain that she was _(Falling. Falling and burning)_ sitting on something cold and wet. Her skin was covered in _(Searing gasoline, blistering her skin)_ goose bumps. She knew she was _(Dying) _alive.

She scrambled to her feet, her bare feet. Her mind was still trying to tell her to extinguish the flames that enveloped her body. It gradually dawned on her that she was, in fact, screaming. She was almost hoarse from the strain on her vocal cords. Only then did she get some control back of her body, and her scream tapered off and faded away.

The girl spun around in circles, trying to figure out where she was. Her surroundings were convoluted and closed in around her. A forest… she was aware this was a forest but she didn't know how it was that she got there or why she had this terrible memory of being on fire.

The car. She was in the car with her mom. They were on the way to school; it was her first day of middle school. The last thing that Jennifer could remember was talking to her mother and then nothing.

Awareness flooding back to her as the pain and terror receded and she became acutely aware of the fact that she was naked. Her clothes had reduced to ash, the fire scouring the lacquer off of her finger and toenails. The temporary tattoo on her shoulder was not even spared, the heat vaporizing the synthetic materials that were bonded to Jennifer's skin. That her hair was unmarred and looked completely normal did not occur to her.

Finally it caught her eye…smoke.

Jennifer had been thrown over a hundred and fifty feet from the car when it landed in the valley floor. That had been over an hour ago and now the remains of the Toyota Corolla were nothing more than a smoldering shell of charred steel, melted plastic and ash. Only a small curl of smoke still rose up from the wrecked hulk.

The moment that Jennifer saw the car she remembered her mother and took off toward it at a dead run, heedless of the spikes of pain in her feet as she stepped on small rocks or pine needles. She stopped short of the car and knelt down, a flash of color catching her eye.

When she stood back up she was cradling in her hand one of the badly burnt but still recognizable yellow sandals she was wearing with her matching dress to school this morning. It was the only thing in the wreckage that showed any sign of color.

"Mom?" Jennifer asked in a quiet voice, cautiously approaching the car.

There was no answer except for the steady "tik-tik-tik" of cooling metal and the call of the birds in the trees around her. A few more steps had brought her around the front of the car to the driver's side; and it was there that she saw what she was most afraid of.

The driver's side door was open slightly and what was half in and half out of the car could scarcely be described as human. It was nothing more than a desiccated and burnt husk stretched across a collection of brittle, heat-withered bones. It looked like Andrea Woods had survived the final impact with the ground but had finally given up her hold on life as she tried to escape the burning wreck of her car.

Jennifer let out a great loud sob as she saw what was once her mother. She simultaneously was repulsed by the blackened corpse yet had an overwhelming urge to cast herself upon her mother's body and cry for as long as it took for her to feel better. Tears streaming from her eyes she looked up, wondering why it was that nobody was here to help yet. Where were the police cars and ambulances, didn't anyone see the wreck?

Jennifer stumbled away from the wreck, still holding the shoe in her hand. Her vision doubled and tripled as she tried to blink away the rain of tears that fell from her eyes. She could hear rushing water and decided to go in that direction, she had no clear idea of what she planned to do; but she wanted to be away from the body of her mother.

Nothing made sense; she didn't understand what had happened or why it happened. She couldn't understand why she was alive and seemingly unhurt. She remembered the pain and the terror; she remembered being engulfed in flames. She was certain that she should be dead right now – just like her mom was. And yet here she was as though nothing had even happened, albeit with no clothes on.

She was moving as though she were in a dream. Her mind was racing and everything in the outside world seemed distorted. She didn't remember taking the walk that got her to the edge of the stream, she just remembered that sitting down next to it and unleashing another volley of bitter tears. She was cold and lonely, but was too tired, too emotionally exhausted, to do anything about either problem.

She suddenly remembered her mom's cell phone, probably still somewhere in the car. Immediately she saw the flaw in that idea though; even if what was left of that phone was still recognizable, there was no way that it would work. Not after the wreck and the fire.

She wasn't sure how long she had sat by the riverbank. She was very close to completely giving into despair when a sensation unlike nothing she had ever experience before struck her. It felt like her eyes were opened, only they already where. It felt like a sense that transcended the five that she was used to had told her some critical bit of information.

Wide-eyed, Jennifer slowly turned around. She was certain that there would be someone standing behind her.

And there was.


	5. Chapter 5

The man walked very casually through the trees, his hands clasped behind him as though he were doing nothing more than taking a stroll through the park on a Sunday, or touring a museum. He glanced at Jennifer for a moment as he walked toward her, pulling a pocket watch from the recesses of his slate-colored pea coat.

He didn't let it slide back down into his pocket until he was standing right beside Jennifer, who was looking up at him with a bewildered expression.

"Looks like rain." The man said pleasantly, his accent distinctly British.

Jennifer said nothing, just gaping at the man idiotically.

He looked down at her and smiled. "Oh I know what you are thinking, the fellow on the news said the weather would stop by noontime. But sometimes you have to go by what your own two eyes tell you, not what somebody else does, yes?"

How young the man looked struck Jennifer. He was definitely younger than her father to be sure, but he was dressed in such an exquisitely archaic costume, resplendent with his watch and his handlebar moustache. Maybe the man was an actor, she thought.

"Well stand up for me now my dear. We can't let you catch cold, now can we?" The man said, pulling his coat off and shook it once, banishing any incipient wrinkles from the dark worsted wool.

Still unsure of what to make of the man, Jennifer stood up with her arms crossed defensively in front of her chest. He gently wrapped his coat around her; the hem dropped down nearly to her ankles. She huddled into it, shivering. Only now did she realize how cold she really was, it seemed as though she had become numb to everything around her.

"There we go my dear, much better now." The man exclaimed, "or at least much warmer at any rate. But then it never does really get all that cold here, not this time of the year. You want to see somewhere cold, try going to Siberia some time. I tell you, I just don't understand the Russians; it's like someone once said "Let's find the coldest place we can where nothing will ever have any hope of growing and let's settle down there, eh?

"I mean, it's not as bad as all that. The place is perfectly lovely if you enjoy ice-skating or dog sledding or maybe eating snow. But I happen to like warm places, your Hawaiian islands, for instance, they are marvelous this time of year."

Jennifer watched the man, saying nothing. The rather one-sided conversation the man was having with her all added to the absurdity of the situation. She felt like Alice having gone down the rabbit hole, the entire thing felt surreal and dreamlike; like one of those dreams that seems so real at the time yet so absurd once you wake up and truly give some thought to it.

The man's reaction to coming across her in the middle of the woods, naked and crying, was the most puzzling thing of all. He took it all in stride as if it were the most common thing in the world to come across somebody in such a state a few hundred feet from a burned out car at the bottom of a ravine.

Now that she thought about it, he rather reminded her of teacher from the fourth grade. He was a Scottish gentleman who, as he put it; once his mouth started flapping, there was no way to stop it but let it wind down on it's own. She remembered that she liked that teacher a great deal and could listen to his stories for hours on end without really ever getting tired of them.

It was then that Jennifer realized that she wasn't paying any attention to the man and refocused her attention to his random ramblings.

"…I'm talking of course, besides that old rotter you people had for a president twenty years or so ago." He suggested, vaguely.

"Oh, I'm sorry my dear." The man apologized, quickly changing tracks. "My mouth has a nasty habit of getting away from me unless I keep it under a tight leash. My name is Grant Trayen, at your service."

He bowed to her with a grace and eloquence that Jennifer had not recalled ever seeing before. He definitely was like someone out of a movie.

"And what might your name be?" Grant asked, politely.

"My name?" Jennifer repeated, unsure.

"Well, I can't very well keep on calling you 'my dear', unless that's what you truly want." He said, smiling.

"Jennifer" she said listlessly.

"Well Jennifer" Grant said. "It is very good to meet your acquaintance, even under such nasty circumstances. But I do believe that it's time that we were going, what say you?"

Jennifer shook her head, suddenly a little bit alarmed. She had images in her head of the police and fire department eventually realizing that a car had gone over the edge and storming down the hillside in a mad dash to save her, but this guy was neither a fireman nor a police officer. He seemed nice enough, but nice people were sometimes the ones to do bad things.

Grant's expression softened, like he was reading her mind. He knelt down in front of her and put his hand on her shoulder. "I know that you've been through a lot today, and it's going to get worse before it gets better; but I will not hurt you nor will I allow any harm to come to you. Something happened to you today that you don't understand, I know it because I see it in your eyes; and I remember what it was like. Come with me and find out what happened to you, after that you are free to do anything you want to."

"Why can't you tell me here?" She asked, not intending the accusing tone she detected in her own voice.

Grant sighed and his shoulders dropped. "It is a very long story to tell and some parts of it are going to be difficult for you to hear. I figure it would be better for you to hear it after you've had a cup of hot tea, or cocoa if you prefer, and you've had a chance to get into a nice change of clothes."

Jennifer was still in shock, and in a situation she had never dreamed she would be in. The weight of everything combined finally pushed her to do something she normally wouldn't have done in a million years; she relented. She nodded her acceptance and let the man lead her away. It didn't even matter where he was really taking her, as long as it wasn't this place.

Grant led her on, his expression turning somber as the two of them walked in the direction he had left his car. Sometimes fate played cruel practical jokes on you. He had come up here only to relax and take a walk, to contemplate deep thought in communion with nature. He had never expected to encounter another immortal up here, not such a new one anyhow. And certainly not one so distressingly young.

She stepped around rocks and sticks, not wanting to hurt the tender soles of her bare feet. Grant wondered what kind of life, or expectation thereof, he could give her. Immortals her age were rare, and the few that there were usually did not live long. He had seen the car and knew that someone she knew, one of her parents most likely, had perished in the crash. He also knew that she was aware, even if it was only subconsciously, that she shouldn't be alive right now.

Death is traumatic and it leave scars. _Especially that first death,_ Grant thought. It tortures the soul and digs it's claws in deep, forcing you remember for the rest of your existence. The pain never truly left you, no matter how long you waited. It hadn't left Grant, not even after more than eight hundred years.

"_Archers! Loose!" Grant screamed, his voice almost drowned out by the din of battle._

_The double-row of archers behind the sieging camp's inadequate walls let their arrows fly. Streaks of wood and metal sailed through the air like a rain of death to plunge into the charging wave of Saladin's army. Many of them fell, but it was like trying to hold off the Lord's flood with a wine goblet, there were just too many of them. _

_Grant's men looked to him, looked to the white mantle with the red cross upon it, to the symbol of his authority. For thirteen months now the crusader army laid siege to the city of Acre, but they themselves were surrounded by the Saracen army under the command of Saladin. _

_Saladin would have been pleased if he knew how weak the command structure had become within the Christian camp. King Guy of Lusignan's wife had died in a pestilence that swept through the camp and his claim to the throne died with her. Months before that; Gerard de Ridefort, the Grand Master of the Knights Templar was killed in battle and his successor had not yet been named. _

_Grant wasn't interested in contemplating whom he should be reporting to, he only intended to keep his men safe. He ordered his pikemen and infantry to come up behind the stockade and prepare for the assault. This wasn't the first time since the double siege that the Saracens had attacked, it wasn't even the first time this week. He just hoped that they would somehow find the strength to repel them one more time. Acre's walls had been breached in several places, they might only need a few more days and then the city would be in the hands of the Christians, as it should be._

_At first Saladin's army broke upon the stockades like a wave against a breakwater, but then they slowly started to pour over the top, often on the backs of their impaled brethren. For every one that was killed, three climbed over to take their place._

_Drawing his sword, Grant ran into the fray, screaming in bloodlust and fury. His sword caught the first barbarian by surprise, splitting both his helm and the skull beneath it, a shower of crimson arcing into the air as the body crumbled to the ground. Stepping through his backswing he caught a second between the shoulder blades, the point of Grant's sword erupting from his chest._

_Grant pulled his sword back out and he had crossed it with another of the Muslim warriors, before the last man's body had even fallen to the ground. He felt powerful, and why should he not? He was a Knight Templar; he had the mandate of God to take back the holy land. The barbarians would kneel before Jesus Christ or the instruments of his wrath, the crusaders, would destroy them. _

_His own apprehension about this battle was gone; surely there were none that could stand up to the Lord's might. He screamed out again, his teeth bared, as he felt the shower of infidel blood spray across his face, his newest victim crumpling to the ground at his feet. _

_Grant caught sight of his next prey and took a step forward and then abruptly he stopped. He looked down and stared dumbly at the arrow that was suddenly protruding from his chest. He took a couple steps forward, trying to take in a breath but nothing was happening. It was like someone had stuck a red-hot iron between his ribs._

_And then they were on him, two Saracens. First one sword entered his abdomen and then another. He tried to bellow out in rage rather than pain, but the blades puncturing his diaphragm had silenced him. Dimly, he felt the sword tumble out of his hands. One of his last thoughts was to curse the sword, to damn it for leaving his grip without his express permission. _

_The world became black around him. He found himself lying on the ground without remembering how he got there. The Templar's cross upon his chest was gone; the red dye had merged into the pool of Grant's own blood. Surely this was all a dream, maybe a vision from the Lord. He could not die, he was intended for greater things than this._


	6. Chapter 6

The break in the rain did not last long, and by the time that Grant and Jennifer had reached his car, the downpour had begun again in earnest. The sky was dark and forbidding with an occasional lance of lightning arcing down from the heavens followed by its rumbling accompaniment. The whole thing matched Grant's mood fairly well.

There wasn't a single word spoken during the entirety of the forty mile trip to Grant's house deep in the Catskill Mountains. He would occasionally glance over at his new charge to see her staring blankly out the window. She was in shock, he figured, trying to process what had happened to her and what was going on happen now. She didn't trust him, that much was obvious, but he hoped that she would be strong enough to handle what would come next; she had to be, because Grant had no idea what he would do if it turned out that she could not.

For more than eight hundred years he had walked the earth, and only a scant handful of times had he seen an immortal so young. The violent death required to cause the immortality to manifest just did not happen often to children except as the result of the most terrible accidents, especially in this day and age. He could remember someone once saying to him that it was an act of kindness to take the head of someone who had risen to immortality as a child. Although Grant understood why and saw the wisdom in those words, there was no way he could ever bring himself to do such a thing.

There were so many problems she was going to have to endure, so many that Grant could not even begin to think of them all. No matter how old she became, she would always look and talk like an eleven-year-old. She might not realize how hard that is now, but in the years to come it would be a constant burden to her. She would always require a caretaker to provide the illusion of her childhood. That didn't even begin to cover the problematic issue of the Game; there were immortals that would see her as nothing more than an easy mark.

Grant pushed these thoughts from his head. He himself had been out of the Game for over a hundred years and he had no intention of returning. Jennifer would be safe at his house for as long as she was willing to stay there, and if she wanted to leave…he would figure out how to protect her when that time came.

The only noticeable reaction Jennifer had to anything in their hour trip was a look of undisguised wonder when they approached Grant's home. Set off in a grove of trees was a building, an old one that was made of painstakingly laid stone walls that rose up to a modest steeple. It looked less like a house than it did a church, a very old church. The roof was made up of thousands of individual wooden shakes; the rain pouring down off of them in this autumn storm come early.

A large stained glass window dominated the side to which Grant drove his Infiniti coupe up to. It was a colorful mural that gaily depicted what would have otherwise been a completely morbid scene; blood flowing on a battlefield as armored knights fought each other with a glowing cross in the air above them. The panel below that was of robed men with red crosses on their chests being tortured in a variety of ways as they looked skyward in piety, the misery and distress on their faces was conveyed disturbingly well.

Grant stopped the car and got out, running around to the passenger side to dutifully open an umbrella to shield Jennifer from the downpour before he opened her door. Her bare feet splashed down into the cold muddy water, turning her ivory skin to dirty beige. She was still closed off and unresponsive, content to allow herself to be led wherever Grant decided to take her; and in this case it was inside his house.

If the outside looked like a church, the inside looked as far from it as you can get. It had a rustic and woodsy charm to it. The wooden beams that crisscrossed the ceiling were dark and well cared for. The floor was made of smooth wooden slats but it was littered with many rugs, some were woven and others were the hides of animals. The fireplace was enormous and still had the remnants of a fire within it, the flames having long since departed until nothing but a few glowing embers remained.

Nothing in the house looked cheap or trivial; each decoration, each piece of furniture and each book on the immense bookshelves spoke of history and purpose. There were old and yellowed pictures in every alcove, ancient swords on the walls with notches and dents in them; not the kind of thing you find in a collector's store, but real weapons that have seen battle and found blood.

"Wow…" Jennifer said tonelessly.

"Yes, it all does look a bit dodgy, doesn't it?" Grant said, misunderstanding her meaning.

"It's amazing." She mumbled, her eyes wide. "You live here?"

Grant nodded. "Aye, it's not much, but it's all I need."

Jennifer tentatively placed her fingertips on an old leather-bound book laying atop a table in the entryway. She could almost smell the dusty years just by being close to the dry leather.

"Where did you get all of these things?" She asked curiously.

"Here and there and everywhere, my dear." Grand said. "Some of it I inherited from my family. Most of it I picked up over the years while I was traveling."

"It's beautiful" Jennifer remarked.

"Thank you kindly, my dear." Grant told her. "Now excuse me for a moment, I'm going to go find some clothes for you to change into."

Jennifer stayed where she was, looking at old photographs while Grant went into another room. One in particular caught her attention; it was an extremely old black and white print of two men standing next to each other and smiling. They were wearing mountaineering gear and the hoods of their fur-lined parkas were pulled up over their heads.

It was the man on the left that she was fascinated with. He looked so much like Grant that it was chilling. The man had to be related, probably his grandfather's father…or maybe even older than that. The man's eyes were mirthful and haunted at the same time, but he appeared to be in good company and having the time of his life in this image. Jennifer wished that she knew who he was and what he and his friend were doing when this was taken.

"Do you like that one?" Grant asked suddenly.

Jennifer started; she hadn't even heard him come up behind her. "Yeah. The one on the left looks like you, who is he?"

Grant's easy smile faltered for just a moment before he renewed it. "I will explain it to you later, but for right now I have some clothes sitting in the guest room for you to change to. It's not much but it will have to suffice until I can get you something proper tomorrow."

Jennifer nodded and then walked through the doorway that Grant had come from. It led to a room with a beautiful canopy bed that looked every bit as ancient as everything else in the house did. Lying atop the flowery quilt covering the bed was a T-shirt and a pair of pajama bottoms. Both were too big, but she stripped off the oversized coat cocooning her and put them both on. A Notre Dame logo was emblazoned on the shirt, it made her think of her father who was also an enthusiastic fan of the Indiana University's football team.

Pulling the shirt down over her head she found herself suddenly staring into the eyes of a young girl; or rather the painting of a young girl. She was close to her own age and was in a light green dress, looking at her with a bemused expression as she sat in an old porch swing. It was very lifelike and made by a master artist, another in the parade of wonders that were surrounding her in the old house. The tree behind her almost seemed to sway in the wind, the cherry blossoms on its branches flourishing in the springtime sunshine.

Eventually she pulled her eyes away and returned back to the sitting room. There she found Grant sitting on the couch and going through a photo album on his lap. He had built the fire back up and it was now returned to life, crackling and popping madly. He closed it softly and smiled as he looked up at her.

"Ah, there we go, much better. Almost like a new person again, aren't you?" He exclaimed.

Jennifer wore a troubled expression and sat down on the chair opposite Grant without responding. She felt chilled despite the fire, in fact she felt like all of the fires in the world could not warm her up right now. She wasn't sure if it was not knowing what was happening to her that made her uneasy, or was it the idea of finding out that made her uneasy. She decided she would never know unless…

"Why am I alive?" Jennifer asked suddenly.

Grant bit his lip and slowly nodded his head a couple times, looking at the fire then back at Jennifer. "You just cut right to the chase don't you?"

"But I'm right though" She said, it wasn't a question.

"It's not the easiest thing for me to explain to you, Jennifer." Grant said, trying to find the words to lend itself to the gravity of what he had to tell the young girl.

"Let me begin with a question." He said. "Have you ever wondered where fairy-tales come from?"

Jennifer blinked, she didn't expect this. She shrugged, wondering where he could be going with this.

"Mythology is a strange thing, my dear. It is a collection of stories that have evolved as they pass down through the ages, spoken from one person to another across the millennia. The storyteller adds his own twists to the story, sometimes even without his own knowing, and so the stories change until they are fantastic yet wholly inaccurate representations of what they originally were. They are the stories that make us dream and imagine, they are the stories that make us wonder if maybe there really is magic in our world.

"But." Grant said, holding up a finger for emphasis. " In every myth and legend, no matter how extraordinary and improbable they might seem, there lies a grain of truth. I'm not saying that winter comes every year because a vengeful goddess had her daughter stolen away by Hades, and I'm not saying for sure that the Lord covered our world in a great flood. I am saying though that every story you have ever heard was inspired by some small seed of truth."

"I'm sorry… I don't know what you mean by that." Jennifer said, sounding frustrated.

Grant sounded for a moment like he was talking to himself more than he was talking to the girl sitting across from him. "I often wonder myself where we fall in the grand schemes of the storyteller and the mythology that once was history. The titans of Greek mythology, could that really be us? I know it's a fool errand to even consider such things, but I find myself always considering who we are and where we came from."

"I'm sorry, I don't understand you. Who are "we"?" Jennifer asked.

"We" said Grant. "Are Immortals."


	7. Chapter 7

It was Jennifer's turn to be caught off-guard. The incredulity of Grant's statement had left her speechless. She tried to form words to talk but nothing was coming out, no coherent thought could make its way to her lips. Her head was reeling even though she found what he was telling her impossible to believe.

Grant just sat in the chair watching her calmly, as though the reaction she was experiencing was something he had completely expected. He gently placed the book that had been laying on his lap onto the table beside him, patiently waiting for Jennifer to sort out what he knew she was going to say next…and he didn't have to wait too long.

"Immortal? You mean like live forever?" Jennifer asked at last.

Grant only nodded to her.

"That's impossible" she replied rationally.

"Is it?" Grant asked, his eyebrow raised. "You should be dead and you know it, I saw it in your eyes when I found you."

Jennifer shook her head. "People survive bad accidents all the time…"

Grant pointed to the table beside him, only then did Jennifer notice her charred shoe. "Do people have all of their clothing burnt off of them after being thrown from a car only to walk away without a single cut, scrape or burn?"

"That had to be what happened, maybe I just got lucky" Jennifer said, her voice unconvincing.

Grant, appeared not to even hear her as he stood up and walked across the room to the picture filled alcoves. He seemed to study the images for a moment before he took one off the wall and carried it across the room to sit back down. He turned the old and yellowing black and white picture around to show Jennifer; it was the very same one she was looking at earlier.

"Who do you see in the picture?" Grant asked.

Jennifer shook her head quickly; knowing what Grant was getting at.

"It can't be." She said, and then louder and more sure of herself, "It's not you."

"December twelfth, 1861 this was taken. The other man's name is Charles Hudson. We tried to climb Monte Cervino in Italy, what you yankees call the Matterhorn. We failed miserably of course, but we had a grand time in the attempt. Unfortunately the weather turned us back about three-fourths of the way from the peak.

"It was bloody cold winter that year, too damn cold for me to even consider another attempt. For that matter, I didn't make another attempt that century. I was only there for the fun, I had no interested in being the first to the top like Charles was. He did finally make it, four years after I went with him."

Grant smiled to himself, staring into the fire.

"He conquered Monte Cervino, but the mountain won in the end. Charles never made it back down to his hero's welcome; He was swept off the face of the mountain along with three of the men with him. I guess that's the way of things sometimes, winning the game isn't always enough. Sometimes you can be victorious and still lose the battle."

Grant snapped out of his revelry and smiled at the young girl. "I'm sorry, my dear. He was a good friend, I miss him sometimes."

"The he wasn't like you?" Jennifer questioned.

"Like us? Immortal you mean?" Grant asked. "No, Charles wasn't immortal. Nor did he know that I was. You see, it's not something that we talk about among mortals, among those that are not like us. The world around us has the rather bad habit of fearing what it does not understand. And when it's done fearing what is different it begins attempting to destroy what is different.

"No my dear, the Immortals have kept themselves a secret for thousands of years and I pray that we will remain that way for eternity."

"If this picture was taken all those years ago, how old are you?" Jennifer asked, then added timidly "If you don't mind me asking."

"But I thought that this was all impossible?" Grant chided her, his grin expanding.

Jennifer didn't reply; she just sat with her hands folded in her lap, looking down.

"It's okay my dear, it's okay." Grant consoled her, laughing. "I am much, much older than the picture is. I'm almost eight-hundred and fifty years old."

Now this caused Jennifer to look up in shock. Part of her wanted to just write him off as a liar, as a dangerous predator that had kidnapped her away. But the same rational voice in her head that told her that immortality was impossible was the same voice that told her that if he was a liar, why come up with such an outlandish story? For that matter, why come up with a story at all?

Grant continued his story though, either unaware or ignoring the battle with rationality that was going on inside the young girl's head.

"I was born in Yorkshire in 1161 and I died almost thirty years later. Much like you I didn't know what the bloody hell had happened to me. And much like you I was scared out of my wits. A man named Mattieu found me and helped me, he was immortal and probably had a far easier time convincing me of this than I am having with you, but that was a different world then. It was a world that had not yet been poisoned by the fool belief in reason and irrefutable logic.

"Back then, humanity was more innocent than it is now. The possibility of magic and miracles was still ripe and alive on our world. Mankind did not have the same interest that it has now in finding the answers to the trivial and the unimportant. That was a time when we fought wars for causes bigger than ourselves, unlike now when we fight wars for money and fool politics."

"How did you die?" Jennifer asked innocently, yanking Grant out of his train of thought.

Grant thought about the question for a moment. Still unsure of what he should be and should not be telling the girl in front of him. Surely all things would have to be explained in time, but telling her or not telling her the wrong information now could be catastrophic in the long run.

"I was killed in a war." Grant replied simply.

"Did it hurt?" She asked him.

"The war?" Grant asked, looking confused.

"Dying." Jennifer clarified.

Grant looked at her expressionlessly for a moment, his eyes appraising her; unsure of how to explain such a difficult concept to so young a child.

"I suppose it did, my dear. Probably hurt me more up here," Grant said pointing to his head, "than it hurt me physically. I had thought that we had right on our side and it made us invincible, being killed hurt me very badly, it hurt my faith. The act of physically dying was but a pinprick compared to finding that my life's work was rubbish.

"You see, I was a knight of the Second Crusade and we believed we had the mandate of God to take Jerusalem back out of the hands of the heretics…"

"Who are the heretics?" Jennifer interrupted.

"Unbelievers my dear," replied Grant, "Those who did not worship the same God as was my faith."

"That's a dumb reason to fight," Jennifer said flatly.

Grant smiled and nodded. "You're a wise one, my dear. It took me forty years to figure out that lesson for myself. I can't say that what happened makes me have any less faith in the Lord than I did back then, it's man that I lost my faith in. And that is what hurt me far worse than the sword that took my life. I had believed that when man was working in the name of God, man was as infallible as He. I was wrong, Jennifer, and I died for it."

Jennifer thought about this for a moment, studying the photo that was now on the table between them. Finally, she looked back up at Grant.

"What is going to happen to me now?" she asked.

Grant took a deep breath and let it out before answering the question.

"That depends a lot on you. I haven't had a student in many years and I would be happy to have you stay with me, but I will not force it on you. You are free to go if you so choose, but there is much you need to learn if you are to survive." Grant spoke slowly, hoping she could see his concern for her. "And I would see it as an honor to teach you."

Jennifer didn't reply, but looked instead into the fire. She studied the dancing orange and yellow flames as they flickered; growing and ebbing like the flapping wings of a bird.

Grant waited for several minutes for some response from the red-haired girl, but none came. Understanding what she was going through, he stood up and threw a couple extra logs onto the fire. Jennifer flinched as the dry wood scattered the glowing embers amidst a cloud of sparks and she looked up at Grant sorrowfully.

He gently put his hand on Jennifer's shoulder and offered her a small and sympathetic smile.

"I understand that you need to consider what I offer you." He told her. "I only wish I could give you better guidance…or make things easier for you. Alas, I cannot so I will just leave you alone for a bit. Make yourself comfortable, I'm going to drive into town and pick up some things. My home isn't stocked with a young girl in mind and if you are going to be here for a bit, I suppose I had better go pick up a few items for you.

"Meanwhile, you have free reign of the house. The spare bedroom is yours if you decide you want to lie down for a bit. I shouldn't be away for long, just a quick run there and back." Grant told her, his reassuring smile not being returned by his new charge.

Jennifer said nothing as Grant gathered his car keys and stepped out of the house nearly soundlessly. The whole day seemed so surreal that she felt as though she should be waking up any moment to her home and her bedroom, where things made sense. To her mother…

Sudden stinging tears welled up, the smoke and the harsh glare of the fire making them burn. She wanted this all to be a dream, desperately so. She wanted to wake up and find that her mother was alive and well and that she could go to her first day in a new school, not an enjoyable first day she was sure, but at least a _normal _one.

She closed her eyes and sobbed as she felt the tears run down her cheeks. She could hear Grant's car start up and drive away off down the road. Part of her, a big part, wanted him to be back here talking to her some more. Somehow being alone made everything seem so much more difficult, it made everything seem so much harder.

She didn't know what to make of Grant. She wasn't sure she believed him about immortality, not exactly. But she _hoped _to believe she _wanted_ to believe. He was an unusual man, but not a bad man. Bad men don't leave you alone in their houses so you can just walk out the door and run away, Jennifer thought.

She opened her eyes, her vision doubled and tripled through the tears. Her face quivered and trebled as she let out another anguished sob. She wondered what her grandparents were thinking right now, did they know about the accident? What were they going to think when they found out that she was still alive?

She stood up and wiped her eyes, a futile effort to stem the damp flow running down her cheeks. Without really realizing she was heading there, she found her way back to the guest bedroom with the lifelike painting of the young girl on the wall. She considered it with her hazy vision for a moment before she collapsed down, face-first, on the bed and closed her eyes. Within a few minutes, she was sound asleep.


	8. Chapter 8

The fire was burning back down to dimly glowing embers when Grant closed the door behind him, dropping several plastic bags on the ground. Something so unnatural and so _modern _as plastic seemed jarringly out of place in his home. It seemed to be almost blasphemous to the mysterious balance of man molding nature to his needs. Yet the unseen grandfather clock off in the dusty recesses ticked off the passing minutes just as it had for more than a hundred years before, it wasn't going to fly apart into splinters and dust due to something as trivial as the intrusion of the modern world.

Grant worried for a moment that Jennifer had decided to run away, but _only _for a moment. He had seen the resolve in her eyes long before she had even known what her decision would be. She was going to stay, not for the right reasons but because she was scared and the only security she now had was in a man that she barely even knew. The girl had a strong and powerful spirit that was going to need to be rebuilt again, but she was going to stay long enough for that to happen, and that was what was important regardless of the reasons.

He walked across to the fireplace, reaching into the woodbin and pulling out a pair of logs. When the dry wood hit the bed of coals, the diminished embers sprung to life again, the wood catching fire like dried cornhusks and bathing the room once more in a ruddy orange glow. The thunderstorm had only gotten worse since Grant had left, and the dark clouds cast the mountainside into an unnaturally early twilight. Fading daylight combined with the flame-cast shadows only served to heighten the sense of mystery around the house.

Satisfied that the fire was driving the slight chill from the room, Grant turned and walked down the hallway and into the spare bedroom. Jennifer was lying on the bed; asleep in the same position she was when she tumbled to the mattress more than two hours earlier. The older immortal watched the younger for several minutes, watching the gentle rise and fall of hear breathing, watching the way her long red hair obscured her face.

The innocence of childhood was not all that different from life itself, Grant thought, it comes but once and when it is gone it leave behind nothing but fond memories of the good times that have passed. It hurt him to think that the innocence would be soon to disappear from Jennifer's life, and he would be the instrument of that change. However, tomorrow would tend to itself and there was no use worrying over that which could not be changed.

Grant quietly crept over to an old oaken armoire and pulled a quilt from within its depths. He shook it out; an intricate floral pattern was carefully sewn into its fabric. Although he could not remember where he had gotten the quilt, he was quite sure that it was Jennifer's age at least five times over and maybe even a bit older than that.

The old immortal sighed and turned to walk out of the room but froze in place, staring at the painting on the wall. Teresa, his long departed stepdaughter, stared down at him from the portrait. He rarely entered this room, it was difficult to look at her picture, sometimes the memories of happiness and love were even worse than the memories of sadness and loss. Outliving those that you love is hard, nobody understood that better than Grant.

_"Don't fidget my dear, every time you reach up and scratch your nose is another ten minutes you are going to be stuck in that chair." Grant told his young stepdaughter, grinning at her. _

Teresa's eyes locked onto him as she tried desperately not to move any more than necessary, tried to do nothing to make the job of the woman painting her portrait any more difficult. However, the light green formal gown itched horribly and gathered up in all the most uncomfortable places. How could she not fidget around?

That was her way of looking at it anyway. The adults in the room seemed to be of a different mind though, especially the stern old crow sitting behind the canvas and flashing her irritable looks every time she moved an inch.

_Grant winked at the girl and she stuck her tongue out at him quickly, almost imperceptibly, which earned her another look of disapproval from the hired artist. _

"_I'm going to go check on your mother, my dear. Don't go anywhere." He said as he turned and walked through the door of the artist's studio. They had been working on the portrait for more than two days now, it was to be displayed at Teresa's twelfth birthday gala and despite the girl's misgivings, even she wanted it to be perfect._

_The salty sea air struck Grant along with the smell of cooking meat. Throughout the years Grant had been sure that there was no city more vibrant and more beautiful than New Orleans at the end of the eighteenth century; and here he was in the midst of it. The French Quarter was the beautiful jewel in an already magnificent setting. He loved it, the men and women walking up and down the early evening Bourbon Street thoroughfare dressed in their finery, the smells of the food and drink, the sound of the music, all of it. _

_They were a few weeks from the best part of all, the Mardi Gras. French for "Fat Tuesday", Mardi Gras was the last chance for an all-out party before the mostly Catholic inhabitants of New Orleans entered into the fasting season of Lent. And throw a party they did, it was the day when all of the things that made New Orleans great became just that much greater as the entire city turned out in celebration. Grant knew that high society threw the best parties in other cities, but the best party of them all was here on this street with the salt of the earth. _

_Grant walked up to his wife, the Creole woman he had wed ten years earlier. She was younger then and recently widowed with an infant daughter. They had met during the very celebration that Grant was so enthralled with, and they had fallen in love with each other almost instantly._

_She looks different now, Grant thought, Her hair is starting to gray at the temples and her face has a few wrinkles in it where before there were none. It didn't matter to him; he would love her for every day that he had her to love. When they met they appeared the same age, now she looked like the older woman but she was still beautiful in his eyes, and always would be._

_He crept up behind her as she leaned against the metal post holding a gas lamp. She had left the studio complaining about the stifling heat and the need to get some fresh air. Now she was watching a pair of horses and their riders trot by as she fanned herself earnestly with a large folding fan that was more decorative than it was functional. _

_She jumped and uttered a little shriek as Grant quietly stalked up to her and laid a kiss on the side of her neck. She quickly spun around and threw her fan at him as he backed away laughing._

"_Damn you Grant!" Victoria Trayen said in her thick French accent. "You about scared me out of my skin!"_

"_I'm sorry love," he said, chuckling as he picked up the fan and handed it back to his wife. "I just came out to see how you were doing. I think that our Teresa is going to be the one to leap out of her skin if she doesn't get out of that chair pretty soon."_

_It was Victoria's turn to smile and she did, brilliantly. "My father had me posing for three times as many portraits when I was her age. Did you tell her that every time she fidgets it's another ten minutes she's going to be in that chair?"_

_Grant laughed. "I told her my dear. Only I fear that if it were true, she would never be permitted to leave her seat; the child acts as if she has ants in her gown."_

_His wife smiled at him but then her face took on a somber look that Grant noticed immediately._

"_Love? What's troubling you?" He asked her. "You haven't been yourself today." _

_Victoria nodded. "Teresa said something to me this morning. She asked why it was that you never seemed to grow older. She said that none of the fathers of the girls her age look as young as you do."_

_Grant nodded, his smile slipping a bit. "Children see much my dear, far more than many adults give them credit for. The girl is sharp Victoria, she knows when she sees something that's out of sorts. One day she's going to have to hear the truth...but not for a long while still, when she can keep a secret better than she can now. I swear it to you Victoria; if she was forced to keep a secret longer than an hour, she would burst from the effort."_

_And with that the mood was bright again, Victoria was carefree and smiling as ever she was. She knew as well as Grant did that there would be a time when Teresa would have to know about her father's secret… "But please Lord, let it be a long time from now." Grant thought. _

_And as though an answer to his prayers, the young girl rushed out through the door and leapt into his arms. He spun her around a few times, hugging her before he set her back down on the ground._

"_Papa!" She exclaimed. "The painting is all finished, come and see!"_

_Grant carried the girl back inside slung over his shoulder with his wife following close behind. The dour old painter was at the door waiting for them, looking considerably less dour now that the deed was done and the talk was ready to move to the realm of payment for her services._

"_She spends more time moving around than any girl I have ever seen in my life." The old woman remarked irritably. "But even so, the portrait is some of my best work and I trust that it's going to meet with your satisfaction."_

_She then turned the painting around to show it to the Trayen family. Grant's breath caught in his throat as he saw it, it was absolutely perfect. It was almost as though an identical twin of his daughter was living and breathing on the canvas right in front of him. He could honestly say that he had never seen such a lifelike picture in all of his long years. _

"_Do you like it dear?" Grant asked his wife._

"_Oh Grant! I absolutely adore it!" Victoria exclaimed, her hand covering her mouth. _

"_And what about you, my dear, how do you like it?" Grant asked, setting Teresa back on the ground to admire her own image set into the canvas._

"_Papa, it's magnificent. I love it!" She said after staring at it for a moment, enraptured._

"_Then happy birthday, my dear." Grant said, putting his hands on the young girl's shoulders. "I love you Teresa."_

"I love you Teresa." Grant said as he stood before the painting. He kissed the tips of his fingers and gently touched them to the canvas upon which his long departed daughter's cheek had been painted.

Grant left the room suddenly feeling very sad and overwhelmed. He had long since learned that the greatest dilemma of the undying was the question: Which is more painful? To allow yourself to love or to forbid yourself to love?

But as he had told himself earlier, there's no point in agonizing over that which can't be helped. He had things to do and it was best to get on them right away.

Grant walked into his small office that was so unlike the rest of his house that it shocked those that saw it. The desk, the computer, everything… it was all so modern looking that it was surely not even a part of the same dwelling.

An expensive computer sat upon his desk beside the modem that fed him the satellite signal that enabled both his telephone and his Internet access. The computer fed Grant's voracious appetite for knowledge, but it didn't have the same tactile stimulation that a good book did. For that he had a large leather chair which he would sit in for hours at a time poring over old books.

He sat down in the overstuffed, leather backed chair and reached for the phone on the end table beside it. He punched a number into it and held it to his ear, waiting patiently for the voice on the other end.

"This is Grant Trayen," he said. "I need to speak to Duncan MacLeod."


	9. Chapter 9

Our world is generally a place of light; the majority of work and business takes place in the light of the sun. However, there are places that are the opposite, places that come to life when the sun goes down and then becomes sullen and desolate once more when the morning comes. And in some places the spark of life never quite departs no matter what time it is, day or night.

One of these such places was about fifty miles southeast of Grant's mountain home. The Newburn Truck Stop looked very much at midnight as it did at noon. The only difference was that in place of the sun, all six acres of the property were brightly lit by mercury-vapor lamps; their bluish-white glare was harsh and industrial, throwing stark contrasts between where the light touched and the deep shadows where it did not.

Eighteen wheelers passed in and out at all times of the day and night, probably looking from above very much like ants going about their work. Their drivers conducted business in Newburn like Bedouins flocking to an oasis; they came and resupplied and then they left for the next stop on their journey.

A man whose business in Newburn had nothing to do with refueling sat in the passenger seat of a Toyota Corolla, watching his wristwatch carefully. He had waited here for almost two hours and was comfortable that the time was right. He pulled a cell phone from his pocket and pressed the send button.

His loose shirtsleeve slid down his arm to reveal a tattoo on the inside of his wrist. It wasn't fancy; it was a curiously shaped black triangle with curved ends, like the tail of a whale, surrounded by eight small circles at the points and subpoints of the compass. The tattoo was one that Grant would have recognized; it was the symbol of the Watchers.

Impatiently the man waited through seven and then eight rings. He was just about to hang up when the voice on the other end answered.

"Dawson" the voice announced.

"Joe, this is Abel Gray, I'm assigned to Grant Trayen." He said.

There was silence for a moment. "Okay, go ahead."

"Joe, I just wanted to let you know, Grant Trayen has taken on a new student today." Gray said. "She died in a car accident this morning."

There was a long and slow exhale on the other end of the phone. Gray waited for Joe to respond but there was none.

"Joe?" He finally asked.

"Yeah." Dawson said. "I got you. You okay keeping track of her until someone's assigned?"

"Sure Joe, It's not a problem." Abel said, "There's more though. I'm not sure how old she is, but I would be very surprised if she more than twelve years old."

"Holy Christ, Abel" Joe said, this _did_ get his attention.

"Yeah, I know." Gray replied. "I just figured you would want to hear about it."

"Yeah...thanks" Joe said, his voice turned dour. "Thanks a bunch."

The conversation ended, Abel put his phone away and reseated in within the pocket of his coat. Looking over, he saw his laptop sitting in the passenger seat of the car. He reached over and opened the lid, pushing the power button. Immediately the screen flashed to life and displayed the Watcher's emblem.

Abel looked around carefully. There were a few semi tractors moving around the parking lot, in transit to or from the refueling stations, but there was nobody paying him an undue amount of scrutiny. He turned back to his laptop and punched in his password. The screen changed to a video of Grant, it was low quality and fuzzy, but it was obviously he and his new student. It clearly showed them getting out of his car and then walking into his house. He hoped that this would all be enough for him to get what was promised to him, but he would soon find out. He pulled a thumb drive from his pocket and pushed it into the slot on his computer for a moment, downloading an assortment of files concerning Grant and Jennifer onto the small chip before returning it to his pocket and tossing the laptop back into the passenger seat.

"_Now comes the hard part". _Abel thought.

He opened his car door and stepped out, looking around carefully, trying to spot _anything _that was out of place, anything that might tell him to get back in the car and get the hell out of there. Leaving the safety of his car behind him, Abel made his way to a pair of eighteen wheelers parked next to a set of truck scales.

The space in between the two trucks was like an alley between two very narrow buildings; the light in between them was dim and thrown about with shadows. It was a place that even someone who had nothing to fear would avoid subconsciously. Abel however went directly for that small space, knowing that's where he would find the man he had come here to meet.

The two massive semi trailers loomed over him like obelisks guarding an ancient and long forgotten road. Their bulk muffled the sounds coming from the more lively parts of the truck stop and Abel found that he was, after all, maybe just a little bit nervous about this place. The man he had expected to find here had a skill for making him uneasy, for making sure that Abel was always kept just a little bit off-balance whenever they met.

"Pterion? Are you here?" Abel asked, detesting the little bit of shakiness he could hear in his voice.

There was no response; the only sound was that of a truck pulling up to the scale some hundred feet away and out of sight from in between the two behemoths. He was starting to get the idea that just maybe he really was alone here.

"Pterion?" He asked, raising his voice slightly.

Before he could react he could hear the sound of steel being drawn from a scabbard and could feel the cold metal of a blade touching the side of his neck. He looked at the blade from the corners of his eyes and immediately recognized it, and the voice of its owner verified his observation.

"Are you a complete fool?" It asked. "How dare you use my name in public."

Abel cold feel the blade leave his neck and he turned around slowly to look at the man that had accosted him so easily in the shadowy darkness. The face was obscured by the darkness, but the angular jaw and the fluid grace through which he moved gave Pterion away just as if he were standing in the unmitigated sunshine.

"I'm sorry" Abel started. "I wasn't sure if you were really here."

"Nevermind that." Pterion cut him off. "You have something that you said was important."

"Grant Trayen has himself a new student, a young girl. She was killed early this morning and he took her up to his cabin. I thought that this information would be far more valuable to you than using him to lead us to the other one." Abel said.

There was a pause at this news, though entirely different than the pause that Abel could hear when he told roughly the same news to Joe Dawson. In this pause Abel could hear the plotting, he could almost audibly detect the well-oiled gears turning in the head of the Immortal in front of him; and it made him uneasy.

In the end though, the news only caused Pterion to chuckle.

"Talk about your chickens coming home to roost." He said at last. "I would have given anything to see old Trayen's face when he laid eyes on her."

"I saw him, he has seen better days." Abel said tonelessly

"I would figure!" Pterion agreed, his voice almost exuberant. "How much worse he will be when I take a child away from him for a second time. You are quite right; this is better than what I had originally planned for you, _better by far._

"I know that you aren't close to your charge like some of your kind tend to be. Honestly Abel, your little order never ceases to fill me with amusement; you all pledge your lives to watching the immortals, keeping your eyes on the game without really interfering in it. Yet in the end, so many of you become little one-man cheering squads, each hoping that it's your guy that's going to win the prize. Tell me, does your Immortal even know that you exist?"

"Of course he knows." Abel said, his voice defensive. "He calls me his '_askari wa kifaru_'"

Pterion looked confused. "His _what?_"

Abel liked the look of confusion, he relished it. The look proved that Pterion was not as omniscient as he would like to have others believe. It proved that he was capable of oversight, and if he was capable of oversight that meant that he could make mistakes. Abel had a strong feeling that his life was going to depend on Pterion making a mistake.

"His askari wa kifaru." Abel repeated. "I know, I had to look it up myself. It's a Swahili phrase that means 'the rhino's guard'. What it means is the little bird, the oxpecker that tags along hanging off of the back of a rhino to eat all of the little insects that collect on its hide. I actually think that in Grant Trayen's odd way, he really means it as a compliment to me."

Pterion snorted. "He might not be so tender toward you if he knew you were helping me. For that matter, your Watcher friends would be even less tender toward you, they would kill you without a second thought."

"That's for me to deal with." Abel said. "I want you to give me what you promised…we had a deal."

"Yes, we had a deal." Pterion snarled. "And when I release Anubis' sprit back to this earth and take his head, you will get your payment. For now you will do what I tell you to do. I can't wait for the girl; Grant will hide her away like the little coward he is inside that house built on accursed holy ground until Armageddon if he's left to his own devices.

"Eventually though, he will realize that he needs to have her trained. He's not going to do it himself; he will take her to someone, probably to Duncan MacLeod. When he does this I want to know, I will take the girl from him and just maybe kill him in the process."

Abel allowed himself to look down for a moment at the medallion that was around Pterion's neck. It was a scarab, a golden casting of an Egyptian beetle. However, the jewel that went into the shell of the insect was gone.

_He hasn't found it yet. _Abel realized. _He's close, but he hasn't found it yet. _

"Are you looking at something important, Watcher?" Pterion asked.

"No." Abel replied.

"Good. You needn't trouble yourself with The Phoenix, all I have to do is reach out and take it. All you need to worry about is this girl. When I have her, you will have your reward. Do you understand, Watcher?" Pterion asked mockingly.

"I understand." Abel said.

"Good boy." Pterion sneered. "Now I want you to listen to me very carefully."


	10. Chapter 10

"Now I want you to listen to me very carefully," Grant said.

Jennifer sat across the breakfast table from the old Immortal, the mushroom and ham omelet in front of her little more than picked at. She had slept for sixteen hours straight and had only awakened when the aromatic smells of Grant making breakfast drifted in from the kitchen. She had sat down to breakfast readily enough but when she started to think back on the events of the previous day, her appetite faded. Besides, she hated mushrooms.

"I can't emphasize this part enough. You will never be able to communicate with your family or your friends again." He told her, waiting for the inevitable reaction.

Jennifer looked shocked. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that you aren't the first person that this is ever happened to, Jennifer." Grant said, his face sympathetic, "And I don't know of anyone who hasn't been far worse for attempting to renew ties with their old life. You would only cause pain for both yourself and for your family. And then there's the risk to consider.

"Four hundred years ago, someone who came back to life would have been called a witch and then driven away. But here in the age of reason, if someone dies and comes back to life, people are going to want to question 'why'. And my dear, I know you are smart enough to understand what that could mean to all of us if our secret was suddenly revealed.

"This is part of the reason that many Immortals will not allow someone as young as you are to survive, many of them just think that you would be too dangerous to us. They think that someone so young is not able to keep our secret safe. "

Jennifer said nothing, her hands folded in her lap. She had started the morning thinking that she was beyond tears, but now she felt them starting to well up in her eyes again.

"I don't want to be immortal." Was all Jennifer said, her eyes welling up.

Grant sighed, shaking his head. "I don't think any of us do, my dear."

Jennifer looked up at him, but said nothing.

"No, Jennifer." Grant said, sensing the question before she could ask it. "Not even me.

"There have been many times over the centuries that I wish I had simply died during the Crusades. Our lives are not easy ones; they are lives of violence and sorrow. I will not lie to you about it, my dear; it hurts to watch those that you love grow old and die while you yourself stay as young as you ever were. But it's not all bad; I can't say that I have regretted my life and the people that I have known over the years.

"But when my death came, I understood that I had to start my life over again. I was taught by the immortal that found me the same way that I'm going to teach you and the way that you, God willing, may teach your own pupil one day. We don't get to decide our lot in life, my dear, all we can do is play that hand that we have been dealt."

Jennifer furrowed her eyebrows for a moment and then looked up at Grant inquisitively.

"You said that we are immortal, but then you also said that there are some people that wouldn't let me survive because of my age." She said. "But if I am going to live forever, how could I die?"

Grant signed and nodded. "That's the trick of it my dear. If left to our own devices we would survive until doomsday, but that's not the case. When an immortal is killed, they will come back to life as though the entire thing never happened. But if an immortal has their head separated from their body, they will stay dead forever. For this reason, you will very rarely see one of us not carrying a sword."

"Why?" Jennifer asked.

"Why?" Grant repeated.

Jennifer nodded.

"Because some immortals are evil, and some desire power." Grand told her. "You see, when one Immortal takes the head of another, he take from him all of his knowledge and power. Power can be a very seductive thing, Jennifer. Power has long had the ability to turn perfectly reasonable people into madmen. It's no different for us; I have had many friends over the years become swallowed by darkness through their own lust for power."

"And so they kill other Immortals?" Jennifer asked.

"Absolutely." Grant said, nodding. "And anyone else who happens to get in their way."

Jennifer looked a little shocked. Grant could see the intelligence in her eyes, he could see her brain rapidly processing all of the information that he was giving to her. He could see her starting to understand.

"How do you sleep at night?" She asked finally.

"You mean, knowing that someone could be coming to kill me?" Grant asked.

Jennifer nodded.

"Well, there are other things you need to keep in mind too. The first is that we know when others like us are around." Grant told her, then smiling he added: "Didn't you wonder how it was that I knew you were one of us?"

Jennifer considered it for a moment and then shook her head.

"No, I didn't even think about it." She said.

"Immortals always know, my dear. When two immortal get close to one another, both of them become immediately aware that another of our kind is around. The sense doesn't always tell us who it is, but it definitely gives us fair warning that one of us is close by. Didn't you feel it yourself, it's like you know that someone is nearby, you feel it coming from here." Grant said, putting his fingertip right over his solar plexus.

"I guess I did." Jennifer said. "It felt to me like someone was around. I just knew that you were going to be there before I even turned around and saw you standing behind me."

Grant nodded. "It's as easy as that Jennifer. There's something else though. Our little game of survival is not without its own set of rules. There are rules that all immortals, no matter how evil, will always follow. One of them is that we will never cross swords while standing on holy ground. Any place with strong spiritual significance is holy ground; it's not just defined by any single belief system."

"Right here." Jennifer said.

"Pardon?"

"Right here, this is holy ground isn't it?" She clarified.

Grant smiled slightly, impressed. The girl was incredibly sharp; it didn't even occur to him that she would have ferreted out one of his secrets so quickly. It also worried him a bit, because if she could shine the light so plainly on this item out of his own closet full of secrets, could she just as easily find all the others?

"Yes it is, my dear. This place used to be an old church. There was a village here, around three hundred years ago. Unfortunately, the entire village has long since gone to rot; everything except the bones of the old church that is. When I first came to this place I decided that I would make my home here. I repaired the church and that, as they say, is that."

"Couldn't they just wait right outside of the church for you to come out and then cut off your head?" Jennifer asked him.

If the girl was at all squeamish about such a concept, it didn't show at all. She sat with her elbows on the table, her breakfast forgotten. She seemed enraptured by all that Grant was telling her, at least distracted enough to not be thinking about the horror of her last twenty-four hours.

"I suppose they could. I mean, there's nothing stopping them. But at the same time, I don't make a big noise and I keep to myself most of the time. Just because I'm immortal doesn't mean that all the others automatically have some idea where I am. Most of those that do know of this place are my friends, or else they simply don't care.

"You see, there are really not all that many Immortal predators out there. They are out there, to be sure, killing other immortals for power or just for sport; but the majority of us are more reflective about our lives. I can use my sword, don't doubt that for a moment, but if given the choice…I would just as soon not have to use it." Grant explained.

"Your sword?" Jennifer inquired.

Grant said nothing but held one finger up and rushed out of the room. Jennifer looked toward the doorway after him, but he reemerged after only a moment. In his hand was a glittering sword with an ornate brass hilt that was polished to a mirror finish. The blade had been replaced times beyond counting over the ages. The hilt however, the hilt of the Templar's sword, was the same one that he carried with him to the Siege of Acre all those years earlier.

Grant placed it reverently, almost lovingly on the dining table in front of Jennifer. The blade reflected the young girl's image back at her. The rays of the sun scattered and heliographed as they struck the immaculate mixture of brass and steel. Age did not touch the sword, every single Latin letter that graced the crossbar, in a language that Jennifer did not comprehend, stood out as forcefully and brilliantly as they did on the day that it was first placed into Grant's hands.

"Grant, it's beautiful." Jennifer said simply.

Grant smiled at her. "This was given to me by a great warrior named Gerard de Ridefort in 1185. It was just a year or so before I left for the Holy Land, and I have carried it with me ever since."

"Are you going to teach me how to use it?" She asked him.

For a moment, Grant looked flustered. He opened his mouth to say something but then closed it. He instead looked down at the sword on the table and shook his head.

"No, my dear. Two-hundred years have come and passed since I have last lifted a sword in violence, and I'm not foreseeing a change to that any time in the near future. Instead it will be a friend of mine who will teach you how to fight. I sincerely hope though, that you will never have the need to put that particular skill to use."

Grant watched as the girl ran the tips of her fingers across the ancient weapon. There was a time that he would not have allowed anyone to touch that blade, but then there was a time that he believed any challenge could be solved with the tip of the sword. Those times were behind him now, he saw the storied weapon upon the table as nothing more than a tool now; a means to an end.

"Why?" The girl asked him.

"Why do I no longer fight?" Grant asked her.

The girl nodded, but didn't look up at him. Instead her fingers traced the hilt of the blade, her fingers running across the wire-wrapped handle and down to the pommel and the cross that was engraved upon it.

"It's a long story, my dear. But the truth is just that I lost my taste for it." Grant said. "I learned a long time ago that I much prefer the accumulation of knowledge to the accumulation of power."

Jennifer said nothing, her face unreadable as she looked down at the sword on the table. Grant was about to ask her what she found so interesting about the blade when he sensed someone nearby, even before he heard the sound of the car pulling up to the house.

Jennifer sensed it too and looked up at Grant in shock, unaware of what the sense was warning her of.

"Is there…" she started.

"Yes." Grant said, "Someone's here."


End file.
